(http://i.imgur.com/wrniabn.png) (http://i.imgur.com/wrniabn.png)
Last year I started putting together a roguelike so that I could learn python for grad school, and I haven't really touched it in a while. That said, I'd really like to continue developing it, albeit slowly. I thought I'd post some screenshots, get some feedback on the aesthetic, and perhaps pow-wow on potential features.
The inspiration for this game draws heavily on Armageddon & Dark Sun. I think the desert environment is woefully underutilized in rougelikes. I think the setting fits nicely some of the themes common in roguelikes -- particularly procedural generation and "harshness."
In a fantasy desert, you can make the world so old, the winds so strong, and the sands so ever-shifting, such that you can almost never find the same place twice. In light of that, the main goals are:
1) Procedurally generate a desert world to explore via a world map.
2) Procedurally generate individual permanent locations (cities, etc.) which reside on specific world map tiles.
3) Procedurally generate all other world tiles each time they are visited, to (a) give a feeling of vastness and fleetingness to each tile, and (b) give as close to umlimited variety as possible within a single character's story. Places like dungeons, caves, etc. will not "regenerate" if you're able to visit them more than once, but what locations are available to you will change each time.
With this in mind, I'm interested in bringing together three gameplay elements: Survival, Dungeon Crawling, and Something to Do with Your Loot other Than Buy Stuff to Get More Loot.
Survival is easy -- food, water, and sleep. Consequently, there will need to be varied flora/fauna, a rudimentary crafting system (likely not recipe based), and a camping mechanic.
Dungeon crawling is also easy. You need varied hostile flora/fauna, loot, and interesting dungeon mechanics (skill-based things, such as climbing or lockpicking).
More challenging is what to do afterwards. Home-building is an obvious choice, but I don't think that fits the aesthetic I'm shooting for. Camping, as I envision it, will already be a sort of "home building" each time you need to do it. You'll have to set up your fire, shelter, defenses, etc., depending on your specific environment. In fact, I think it will resemble home-building more than a traditional "surival" mechanic, as it'll be based on what sort of camping packs and supplies you have -- no need to go find 6 wood, a flint, and a stone to start a fire each time. You'll, for a time, at least, have better equipment to buy, but that eventually gets boring. I'm not sure where to go here. This is an area I'd love some input on.
Anyway, below are some screenshots. I'd love your input! I've hobbled together the tileset from others online and a bit of MSpaint work. The tileset can be changed by a simple file-swap, so mostly I'm concerned with the overall aesthetic -- colors, lighting, etc. Click the images to make them bigger.
World Map
This first batch are from the world map, and show off just a little bit of the procedural world generation that goes on. The world is largely desert, and is divided much the same way as Armageddon might be, into sandy desert, rocky deserts, salty deserts, scrub deserts, and mountains.
A sand desert between two distant cliffs:
(http://i.imgur.com/phrBwdi.png) (http://i.imgur.com/phrBwdi.png)
Deep in the mountains:
(http://i.imgur.com/GWJG2R0.png) (http://i.imgur.com/GWJG2R0.png)
A large dust bowl in the mountains:
(http://i.imgur.com/DrS0MB5.png) (http://i.imgur.com/DrS0MB5.png)
A cliff overlooking a scrubby valley.
(http://i.imgur.com/N4VCXnk.png) (http://i.imgur.com/N4VCXnk.png)
A day/night and basic weather system is implemented, and their biggest effect is on lighting. The first screenshot is night-time on the world-map:
(http://i.imgur.com/f0IS4kk.png) (http://i.imgur.com/f0IS4kk.png)
This second screenshot is day-time, during a sandstorm (night-time sandstorms are even worse):
(http://i.imgur.com/dcwLrTq.png) (http://i.imgur.com/dcwLrTq.png)
Local Maps
The following are local-map screenshots. Sand dunes are the most challenging to generate right now. My biggest issue is differentiating the dune maps from the world map. This may be true across other areas as well.
(http://i.imgur.com/zii0H6e.png) (http://i.imgur.com/zii0H6e.png)
Here's a rocky desert near a cliff-face:
(http://i.imgur.com/mbDXmIC.png) (http://i.imgur.com/mbDXmIC.png)
Night-time with a lantern, in a similar location:
(http://i.imgur.com/RvlUWyr.png) (http://i.imgur.com/RvlUWyr.png)
Night-time, during a sandstorm, with a lantern:
(http://i.imgur.com/AOd2NUL.png) (http://i.imgur.com/AOd2NUL.png)
Here's the inside of a ruin. The red "u"s are braziers. Ruins are generated sort-of-randomly. They're made of building blocks, and each building block has several different individual bits that can be randomized. The addition of dungeon "themes" further randomize each building block. Not all dungeons are tunnel-room-tunnel-room, either, but may be other sorts of structures.
(http://i.imgur.com/RQJPeUY.png) (http://i.imgur.com/RQJPeUY.png)
Here's after exploring a bit. I decided to give a sort of "memory" to locations, but I'm not convinced it should stay that way. I sort of like the idea of the player getting lost.
(http://i.imgur.com/r6vmcjp.png) (http://i.imgur.com/r6vmcjp.png)
Here's one more example of a dungeon of similar design:
(http://i.imgur.com/m0RGMmT.png) (http://i.imgur.com/m0RGMmT.png)
These screenshots don't show everything. Lots of creatures and plants are in (albeit unbalanced), and different sorts of creatures have different behaviors (thought they are pretty simple distinctions). Combat works, but is based. Food, water, and sleep systems are in, but don't really do anything but kill you at current. I didn't show all environments, but barely most have local-map generation systems already made. Essentially the bones for lots of systems are in -- but nothing is totally fleshed out. You could actually play the game right now, if you're cool with ~40 enemies and something like 10 pieces of equipment.
Thoughts? Don't be shy if you think it's ugly or stupid. Points to anyone who recognizes the placeholder title-image.